Abstract
At the beginning of the 21st century, tax lawyers are subject to complex and technical professional regulation. While the incremental changes in this regulation often prompt considerable debate at the time the change emerges, the intellectual history of those debates and changes has only recently begun to be written. In a prior article, I explored these developments in the period 1945-1965, documenting a tax professionalism that tended to be patriotic, philosophical, and pragmatic. In this Article, I turn to the subsequent 20 years, documenting the domination of the professional debates by committees and the ascent of a significantly more constrained and technically oriented professionalism.
This first section of the Article highlights the themes and tones of the 1945-1965 tax ethics literature, and then provides the political context and an overview of the legal changes in 1965-1985 that frame the tax ethics literature of that period. Section II begins in 1965, documenting the history of the first Formal Opinion (Opinion) on tax lawyer ethics issued by the American Bar Association's (ABA) Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (PR Committee), which after considerable criticism in the ensuing years was substantially revised by a second Opinion in 1985. Section III is focused on 1980-1985, investigating the first foray of the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) into directly and significantly regulating tax lawyers through Circular 230—and the bar's response. Section IV highlights the discussions that occurred on the sides of the debates over PR Committee Opinions and Circular 230. Section V provides reflections on the 1945-1985 history of tax lawyer ethics.
Recommended Citation
Hatfield, Michael
(2014)
"Committee Opinions and Treasury Regulation: Tax Lawyer Ethics, 1965-1985,"
Florida Tax Review: Vol. 15:
No.
1, Article 11.
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/ftr/vol15/iss1/11